*I’d advise to listen to this song to set the tone for this one.

CLICK HERE for the song My Boyfriend is Back by The Angels, 1963

The House didn’t always impose a harsh judgment on it’s rental wrongdoers. After all, nobody is perfect.

Sometimes it would just enjoy toying with lives when needed.

Jenny and Kayla were the very best of friends. Always doing everything together like going out to eat, and shop, and typical girl things. They had recently decided to start a new thing together: roller skating. That was back ‘in’ and both sets of their parents were happy about their kids being joined at the hip, and doing active things together, rather than sit around and play on their phones.

Kayla’s parents had rented The House for a getaway before football games started. One weekend night there, the two cheerleaders were left alone for a few hours in The House while Kayla’s parents went to shop, and eat for the night. They’d be back around 9.

And while they were gone, the girls…

Sat around and played on their phones.

They’d put their matching pajama pants on, and got a big fuzzy beach throw to share, and sat on opposite ends of the long, expensive VRBO couch, facing each other. They’d just whiled away the hours sharing memes, reels, and downloaded pix of girls they hated in school, framed them with huge chains, and gave them all horse teeth and hatchets in the head. They laughed and said ‘You outta be shamed!’ then deleted the pix and found another girl to make fun of as their night’s entertainment.

In the year 2023, The House was updated and was now a modern ‘smart house’. There was no shortage of screens and touch pads within its walls. And all of them were controlled by Alexa. The temperature, the TV, the microwave, the lights inside and out, the fireplace: all were just voice commands away from being efficiently operated.

They had grown tired of the sappy man-hating Swifties that were so popular now. So the two girls were listening to Post Malone hits on the house Alexa speaker system while they chilled and electronically destroyed the ‘less-than-them’ classmates.

Recently, they had eschewed all of this recent independent girl movement, with bull testicles on their pink Jeep bumpers, in favor of being a little bit needy.  They both liked the attention of the boys.

The girls at school had begun to stand back in awe as the boys would swing open the doors for Jenny and Kayla as they came into the building. It was like they were royalty now.

All the high school boys were after the two hottest cheerleaders, Jenny and Kayla.

But, all was not as it seemed between these two peppy cheerleaders.

Back at home, Jenny had secretly wanted Kayla’s boyfriend. He was the quarterback. He was handsome. He was rich. He was nice. He was popular. He was from a very well-known and respected family in town.

Aiden was perfect.

And Kayla was completely unaware of Jenny’s desire for her perfect boyfriend.

Nothing can come between a solid girl ‘yada yada’ friendship like a competition for a handsome and rich quarterback.

Or would it?

Tonight, the House felt playful. Naughty, even.

Alone and playing on their phones… The two teenage girls were content to just lie around on fancy rented furniture, eat junk food, and laugh at reels, memes, and YouTube videos.

Abruptly Posty stopped crooning and gave way to something that was most definitely not him.

♪ ‘Hey laa hey laaa my boyfriend’s back’, with handclaps, streamed over their living room speakers.

They both laughed loudly and resigned to the fact that something went Sideways in the Alexa matrix.

Who would ever even want to listen to that sappy music?

ah… Old people.. *eyeroll*

‘Alexa, next!’

♪ ‘Hey laa hey laaa my boyfriend’s back’ bumped up a notch in volume this time.

Well, a stuck Alexa was enough to totally wreck a good beach trip. Needing instant fixes and gratification was part of their generation. Why doesn’t Alexa get this? The rest of the world certainly did.

And then, to compound the situation, the big screen over the fireplace flickered on.

With the sun setting, and the family not due back for another couple of hours. this turn of events from enjoying the making fun of classmates to a misbehaving home entertainment system, was unnerving for these two besties.

Slowly, plain and simple white fonts faded into clear and readable sight on a black background on the enormous smart TV screen.

‘I love you, Jenny. I can’t wait to be with you again when you get back from the beach.

My dearest love,

Aiden.’

♪ ‘Better look out now, he’s coming after you’ played louder now on the speakers overhead.

‘Kayla, Kayla…I’m so sorry, it was just once! And it meant nothing!” Jenny pleaded as Kayla burst up from the couch, threw back the throw that they had shared, and burst into tears. She headed to the door out onto the deck, she just needed to get some air and think this out.

‘Jenny! just shut up!  And turn that damn Alexa off!! I can’t even!’ as she sobbed and approached the deck door.

♪’You’re gonna be sorry you were ever born’ screamed now and painful volume as Kayla held her shaking hands over her ears and cried louder.

As if it had a human hand on it, but nobody was there on the other side of the glass door, the deadbolt flipped sideways and locked.

The door locked itself.

The House made sure that the girls with horrible attitudes had an adjustment.

It was for their own good.

♪ ‘If I were you, I’d take a permanent vacation’ blared from the speakers at painfully deafening levels now.

If you were walking down the beach that night, you would have seen a very distraught and beautiful young brunette cheerleader with her face plastered against the big glass door facing the ocean. The ocean never paused from its constant rolling movement as her tears rolled down her mascara-stained cheeks.

You would have seen her mouth sob for help as she slid exhaustedly down the glass door.

And you would have felt most sorry for her, and her perilous situation. And you would have wanted to help, but getting closer to the house all you could hear was her muffled screams and an old song playing over and over and very loudly cautioning you:

♪’You’re gonna be sorry you were ever born’.

And if you listened closer,

you would have heard The House snicker.